All posts by Simona Pop

Do you find it comforting to dismiss blockchain as “flash in the pan”? Simona Pop believes you’d be a fool to do so and explains why it will live up to the hype.

There is a pattern emerging where new technologies are treated with a certain degree of skepticism. After the initial wave of excitement and expectation, many of the game changing advances are suddenly approached with a “flash in the pan” dismissal.

Is it meant to reassure comfortable people and businesses that carrying on as they are is the better option? Why risk innovation when you can draw out a tradition type stance?

But this isn’t the technology’s fault. Many of these advances are – when divorced from the Gartner hype cycle and the hashtags and actively placed in their proper context – exactly as exciting and game changing as they seem, if not more so.

Blockchain is a high-profile victim of this phenomenon: as a distributed ledger technology that promises faster, more secure payments, many industries have been exploring its possibilities and many more have been writing and talking about it.

Purchasing is no exception. And while blockchain technology may have limited application in other professions, in this one, it will live up to the hype. As a means of reducing costs, improving efficiency, controlling fraud, and boosting transparency, it has tangible, real-world benefits for procurement functions – whatever the market or business they work within.

In a recent article, Paul Clayton, Head of New Service Development for Basware, states:

”In 2017, blockchain is word of the year, it’s absolutely everywhere. But it’s not earth shattering, it’s not the third generation of the Internet it’s just an interesting concept with some obvious benefits and flaws.”

Let’s go through some of the reasons why Basware feel blockchain is not all it promises to be for finance and purchasing:

“Whilst a blockchain itself is safe, an application using it remains hackable” – This is also true of your bank software, or Apple Pay or pretty much any software we are currently using for payments. It should not stop us using it or leveraging its deep transformational effects in how businesses operate.

“It can be too transparent” – Technically true, but in reality the references to user wallets are encrypted key strings which, whilst easy to relate to the originating source and other related transactions, is not as easy to relate to an actual physical person. In much the same way as a credit card number isn’t easy to relate to a person without extra information.

“It’s not the most elegant solution” – Here’s where we strongly disagree. The elegance is in the simplicity. Banks have been trying to come up with distributed ledger technology since the 70s but they were hindered because they refused to be outside the transaction. By using TLS style encryption and cutting out the transaction verification at financial institution level, the whole transaction becomes significantly simpler.

“You can still lose things!“ – Of course you can. You can lose your wallet too.

The argument that there isn’t really that much value in blockchain when the benefits of smart contracts and removing the invoice are tangible possibilities is nonsensical. Removing the need for invoice processing is huge and any platform truly helping businesses handle their invoices and payments should know this. Invoice processing, and invoice fraud by proxy, are the biggest threats to company money out there today. Just look at Facebook and Google who were victims of $100M payment scam this year.

Blockchain automates trust

Trust is the cornerstone of every business relationship. On a fundamental level, you need to believe that the other person is who they say they are – and they need to believe the same of you.

In this age of phishing, malware, and general cyber security attacks, this seemingly simple principle becomes complicated. Login details are stolen and turned to criminal ends; high-level executives are being impersonated by hackers, who then persuade other parties to release vital funds; the sheer scale and variety of cybercrime is growing.

Blockchain provides a means of automating trust. By using permanently retained historical data to authenticate everyone involved in a deal, each side can be assured of the other parties’ trustworthiness: the seller and buyer alike are always who they say they are, and the product is the right product. What’s more, because prices cannot be modified, invoices will effectively be rendered obsolete.

This greatly simplifies the complicated, multi-faceted transactions that make up modern supply chains – maximising security and reducing the risk of fraud.

Blockchain is fast

Procurement functions will also benefit from the speed and efficiency of blockchain technology. For one thing, it’s fully digital: by taking the more time-consuming elements of a conventional transaction out of the equation, you immediately save time and resources that would have been spent on these tasks.

Shared access databases mean that it’s no longer necessary to manually scan invoices – dramatically accelerating the reconciliation process as all parties are allowed to view the same transaction.

Blockchain effectively cuts out the middlemen. By removing all intermediaries, it makes the processing of payments and transactions much faster: purchase order data can be exchanged on the blockchain at a far speedier pace than current levels will allow. This technology can also identify the nearest and most cost-effective vendors: decreasing lead and work time, and improving your operational efficiency.

Blockchain creates strong audit trails

Blockchain technology stores every detail of every transaction at every level of the supply chain. This will – as mentioned above – facilitate greater fraud control, and it will also offer transparency into issues of legality such as money laundering and the use of child labour.

And though it’s a digital technology, blockchain will also assist with the tracking and recording of physical items. As they are transported across local and international borders, they can be identified at each location – creating a strong and fully documented audit trail.

This kind of end-to-end visibility ensures that delays are rare and that missing items are found and allocated to supply routes more easily. This allows you to manage and optimize these supply routes with maximum efficiency – ensuring that no space is wasted and no customer disappointed.

It’s clear blockchain will have a significant influence on procurement and finance. The advantages of being able to streamline business processes, secure payments, and automate workloads shouldn’t be understated. Do the research, ensure you’re positioning your business correctly and you’ll be in the camp that benefits – today, and in the future.

Simona Pop’s Big Idea provides a recipe for convincing even the most unwilling departmental heads to embrace new technology.

Register as an online delegate for the London Big Ideas Summit 2017 here.

Deciding to adopt a new technology has historically been a pain in the ass. An expensive, dull, prolonged pain nobody wants to deal with. The problem I have is that those adjectives belong to OLD tech. Putting nimble new technology in the same pile with 90s software is like mixing vodka with milk. It may have worked for the Mad Men of the 50s but it is an unnatural association. (I watched Mad Men until the 5th series then lost interest, by the way.)

Here’s the gist of it: people need to be comfortable with the cost and potential risk of adopting new technology. How do you make them comfortable? By providing “proof of concept” and calculating these costs and potential risks. One simple guideline is the 10X rule: if you can expect a return of 10 times your investment, then it’s worth it.

However, with technology – especially if it spans across different departments – you must take into account that your gains will come from any of several improvements, or a combination of improvements:

Cost reduction

Efficiency improvement

Fraud prevention

Admin processing speed

Mobilising the workforce

Product/service enhancement

Competitive environment

Your gains will be the sum total of all factors. If adopting a new technology provides an improvement in one factor but it’s at the expense of another factor, it may not be worth adopting. This tends to limit everything to a financial view though. A far better formula includes non-financial factors, some of which will outweigh the financial ones. You need to also remember that some investments in new technology can require at least a year to show their true value.

Managing risk should also be incorporated into your analysis, but remember that you take a risk whether you adopt a new technology or not. The advantages a new technology provides may not be obvious – until a competitor adopts that technology and makes your competitive disadvantage clear. In that case, adopting a new technology reactively will put you on the back foot. Playing catch-up is never a good business move!

Risk Reduction Recipe

Let’s call it – new tech is the unknown. The unknown is typically scary to humans. And since I am all about the H2H in business, working to remove that fear is key to successful tech adoption.

One sure way to reduce the risk is to go for a taster: a proof-of-concept implementation. Starting small & early allows you to identify problems early when they are far easier and less expensive to correct. It also makes it easy to start over if the proverbial hits the fan.

When rolling out new technology across multiple departments, you’re guaranteed to encounter a mixed bag of responses. From enthusiastic stakeholders who “get it” straight away, to nervous – and sometimes downright hostile – departmental heads who are terrified of change, you’re going to have to manage them all.

Here’s the secret – rather than trying to beat hostile stakeholders into submission with the force of your arguments, ask the willing departments to do the job for you. Carry out a proof of concept with your supporters so you have the evidence required to overcome any objection, and go back to the risk-averse stakeholders with your advocates at your side.

Also keep in mind that both organisational and process changes will be needed when bringing in tech. Procedural changes are very common. The reason why you are looking at that tech is typically to improve current processes you have found lacking. You must be aware that tech is here to improve NOT replicate. Trying to fit clunky processes on efficient technology is not only frustrating but a complete waste of time and resource. Changes to previous processes will need to happen and you will have to expect some resistance to those changes. Again, human nature.

The mark of good technology for me is its accessibility and great user experience across the board (from top to bottom, from left to right). Because you are effecting change (and that’s difficult enough), the very last thing you need is that change to come in the form of clunky, pain in the ass – MS-DOS looking software.

In my quest to empower people through tech, one problem I come across a lot is: “How much resource do I need from our side because we really cannot spare anyone?” This question is proof of a bad reflex left over from dealing with old tech. The type of tech that takes a year just to implement, another year to train for and another to realise it’s not right for you anyway even though it is costing you serious cash. The type of tech that is SO unlike what you know and love in your personal life, it might as well be alien. A vintage alien at that.

Clear communication will help overcome the organisational and process challenges. When people get that you are in fact trying to empower them to work better and easier, they will want to be part of that higher drive.

As Richard Branson says: “Screw it, let’s do it!” Move quickly, find out what works and what doesn’t. Stalling, procrastinating of burying your head in the sand are NOT ways to avoid a pain in the ass.

Register as an online delegate for the London Big Ideas Summit 2017 here.

We know that many organisations are still mired in decades-old procurement processes. Besides the inherent inefficiency of paper-based workflows, spreadsheets and other manual tools, the real concern lies in their opacity.

One of the things I’ve learned working with various businesses and multiple stakeholders within supply chain and finance is that there is no real B2C/B2B divide. It’s all H2H: human to human. The concept was coined by Bryan Kramer and is the real foundation for every single business relationship we cultivate, internal or external.

Now, human beings are complex creatures, but for all their complexity, they greatly appreciate simplicity. Finding, understanding and communicating the complex in its most simplistic form is the recipe for success when it comes to relationships.

And a more recent way of translating the very complex into simple formats is technology. For many however, the subject of technology is a double-edged sword to be approached with extreme caution. It is seen as both a huge challenge and an opportunity depending on the maturity of the business and its stakeholders. Zooming in on procurement departments in particular, distinct feelings of inertia and unease prevail when it comes to tech.

So many procurement professionals I have sat down with continue to apply traditional tools to the purchase-to-pay process even though better, more efficient alternatives are available to them. The reasons? That mighty focus on cost savings is undermining the VOI (value on investment) and the temptation to keep things as they are because “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it or risk it” is holding organisations in a “vintage” status quo that’s affecting their competitive edge on a daily basis.

The current climate is very much a head in the sand affair. Procurement processes that have been around for the past 10, 20, 30 years are characterised by a great degree of opacity. The reason for this is the historic dependence on paper, manual work and fragmented software systems. This opacity means the relationships between departments/stakeholders within a business are not exactly what you would call fully functional. There was a time when things had to be this way because that was the best there was. That is no longer the case and pretending nothing has changed is far more dangerous than “risking” change.

Always reacting to situations as opposed to being proactive towards challenges is a symptom of traditional process that needs upgrading. The ability to stimulate internal collaboration and valuable relationships is affected by the permanent race against time. There isn’t one finance professional I’ve met who isn’t completely incapacitated by “month end” as a result of delayed purchase approvals or lack of a PO system. Incomplete or delayed information passing between departments opens the door to fraud and perpetuates false data. These draining complexities can be simplified by shining a light on proceedings. That light? Technology.

Technology is an agent of empowerment, not a antagonistic nuisance that must be adopted just because everyone else is doing it, with no real merit of itself. The key advantages technology brings are speed and transparency. Moving the information processed from paper/desktop to cloud/mobile and delivering it in real time as opposed to post-fact is all about simplicity. Eliminating the need for 100 spreadsheets, lengthy manual approval chains and data entry clerks will empower people from the bottom up, the top down and across the board. Accessing objective information and using it in real time will ensure each task is performed to the best standard and in full compliance.

A move towards value-based relationships is already happening as businesses are acknowledging that well-functioning relations are worth as much as good prices or good bonuses. Trust, common values and clear, real-time communication are all hallmarks of good service. Something every business needs to achieve to stay competitive, right?

In conclusion, using technology to empower the talented people across the P2P process is the key to better relationships and ultimately, better business. Accessing data in real time and performing tasks on the go will not only make people better practitioners but better collaborators too. The human-to-human foundation of successful business is based on trust, transparency and common goals. Given the goal of procurement is to make a business successful, promoting trust, efficiency and transparency should be a natural move.

Legacy systems and poor past user experiences are creating a fear around technology in the hospitality industry.

Brian A Jackson/Shutterstock.com

“I think it’s difficult for technology to get to the top of the list of things to do next” said Jane Pendlebury, CEO of HOSPA, in our recent roundtable on the topic of technology in hospitality. And with that, she nailed what I had been dealing with ever since InstaSupply started.

There is always something more pressing that needs attention before looking at a tech solution. Even if that tech solution will save you, or make you the money to pay for that other pressing something.

There’s this fear of the unknown that’s keeping a lot of hospitality businesses stuck in the past and relying on tools and systems that for a lot of other industries became obsolete years ago.

Hospitality Lacking Information

Lack of information and education is a key factor here. Peter Hancock, CEO of Pride of Britain Hotels, rightly pointed out that most people involved in the running of a hospitality business aren’t necessarily the “tech-iest” of individuals.

Experience with older systems and their tendency to create rather than solve problems has left a bitter taste in a lot of mouths. Couple that with expensive upgrades that weren’t made clear at the start of the contract and we have an added layer of mistrust.

The result of all this is an industry that’s still heavily reliant on paper, lacking transparency on spending and full of overworked staff. Front of house staff not only have to ensure their guests enjoy a great experience but in many cases handle a lot of finance and procurement tasks that are absolutely outside their job description.

Lightening the Workload

Technology is created to help lighten the workload and improve productivity, not to take away jobs or swindle businesses out of money because they don’t understand what it does.

Just as a washing machine will handle a lot more clothes and get them done a lot better and a lot quicker than you would by hand, so too will the right technology remove manual data entry, managing 145,789 spreadsheets and let you know exactly what you are spending and on what in real time.

Watch our full discussion on the fear of tech here:

InstaSupply is all about working smarter and simplifying business through technology.

InstaTalks are about bringing great minds together and uncovering where the fear of tech comes from when it comes to business operations.

Finding out what the pain points are and then educating people in plain language. No jargon, no small print. It’s time to understand that technology is a revenue generator, not a budget sinkhole.

Time never seems to be on our side. It’s time for procurement spend its time more wisely, and work smarter, by leveraging new technology.

Dragon Images/Shutterstock.com

Procurement, finance and operations have forever been working on ways to integrate simply and effectively. While it is reasonably simple to coordinate small teams in one office, hospitality is one industry faced with the tough task of managing spend and suppliers across multiple locations, multiple businesses within a business and a seasonal spend pattern.

Traditionally, these three departments have been engaged in a never ending paper chase between numerous locations and head office. Not to mention the arduous task of managing budgets across a multitude of locations, geographies and currencies. Until now, managing this extensive workload has meant the headcount in the back office goes through the roof and the time staff should be spent in front of the guest/client, is instead spent on pushing paper and placing orders.

Breaking with Tradition

So how do you fix this expensive problem, and work smarter?

Breaking decades’ old business patterns and cleverly using technology to simplify buyer – supplier interactions and location management. However, Z Hotels have cut administrative tasks by up to 90 per cent through simplifying and digitising many of their previously time devouring tasks.

Frontline hotel staff would spend up to five hours a week on purely administrative duties like placing orders, chasing paper invoices and pushing items through the approval process back to head office. Meanwhile, head office staff lacked the transparency and real time control on departmental spend and relied solely on location staff to be their eyes and ears.

Since bringing in a new, cloud-based procurement platform, they have cut admin duties for location staff time down by 90 per cent.

Bev King, CEO at Z Hotels, commented on the benefits of the new solution. “Customer service is at the forefront of everything we do, InstaSupply gives us the opportunity to have a much more automated solution that allows our staff to have time to focus on the service to the customers rather than try to fill the administrative gaps. The process has become very easy to use. We’re on the right track,” King said.

Supported Growth Ambitions

The platform now pulls together all orders, delivery reconciliation, stock, invoice processing, location management and budget tracking as well as a host of other functions still being refined within the portal. All this with full integration with the business’ accounting software.

When Z Hotels first brought in InstaSupply, at the end of 2014, they had big ambitions to grow. A year later, they have just opened their 10th site and are on course for another five by the end of this year.

Under the traditional model, a flurry of staff would have been brought in to handle the additional workload that growing nearly 300 per cent would have created. In fact, the head office team that deals with finance and procurement has stayed the same as it was in the beginning.

It is this ease of use that makes it a great solution for Z’s predominantly Millennial operational staff. Implementing a fully responsive, one click, cloud solution is in tune with the emergence of a dominant Millennial workforce who will no longer just get by with archaic systems and countless spreadsheets.

With a wealth of new technology available to procurement and finance teams, isn’t it time for your organisation to look at ways you could work smarter?

Watch a video on this case below:

Instasupply employs advanced cloud technology and a user-friendly web application to give users control of their time and their spend. Find out more about Instasupply’s purchase-to-pay ordering system, and supplier invoice management and consolidation functionality, at their website.

When time is money, making sure you’re spending it on what matters is a key metric to profitability.

Do you know how much time you’re spending on certain tasks? Do you know how your teams are spending their work day? And more importantly, do you know how your finance teams are spending their time?

Where Does Time Go?

APQC, a Texas-based research firm, recently conducted a study of some 832 companies’ finance departments. Using data from APQC’s Open Standards Benchmarking database, they found out what finance teams really get up to at work.

Things like transaction processing, decision support and management activities were all looked at as part of the study and APQC found that no matter how big or small the company was, roughly half of finance teams’ time was spent on transaction processing. Half.

In plain English, this means highly paid finance staff spend the time equivalent to Monday AM through to lunchtime on Wednesday making sure invoices are being processed, bills are getting paid and fixed assets are accounted for.

Shifting the Balance

Now, ask a CEO what he’d like to see his finance team doing and he will tell you he’d like them delivering fast, reliable information about the economic implications of specific tactical business moves. When the year is halfway through and performance needs improving, a CEO wants to know the monetary impact of the decisions they plan to make. What the potential revenue and operational implications are when it comes to investing company resources.

When the finance team spends nearly 50 per cent of its time on transactions, plus a few more hours per week going through internal approvals and putting together financial reports, it equals not much time left to offer that critical decision support.

A finance team therefore needs to constantly juggle providing key financial information to support company growth and getting those bills paid. Reducing paperwork and minimising manual labor are an absolute must when it comes to shifting the balance.

Away from Paper-Based Methods

Based on research from bodies such as The Hackett Group, we know that just under 70 per cent of vendor invoices globally are still in paper form. That means someone within the finance department needs to manually enter all of that paper-based data into a computer based program, either straight into the accounting software, or in a spreadsheet first and then into said accounting software. This means there is a hell of a lot of paper clogging up the system, costing time and money in training, execution and management.

Further still, the software in use was generally built circa 1995 and fails to offer transparency on transactions, clarity in reporting or intuitive processes. Since the main aim here is to deal with transactions quickly, in a minimum amount of time, whilst minimising errors, having such software in place is nonsensical.

Finance departments need their working hours back to focus on their actual function in driving companies forward. Understanding costs, revenue streams and operational cost pitfalls is where their true value comes into play. Pushing paper around is a waste of time.

Be Sure to Choose Wisely

As the digital trend has been making its way into B2B (finally), larger companies have pushed for greater finance efficiency and invested resources into implementing digital tools to facilitate electronic information flows. Merely investing in something branded “cloud” though doesn’t mean it will solve all problems.

The choice needs to be made wisely. It needs to be made with the end user in mind. If it seems too complicated, it IS too complicated. And that means your staff won’t use it, or certainly won’t use it properly. You will be buying an Aston Martin, and it will be driven like a Ford.

Smart companies able to recognise the importance of user focused tech will instantly reduce the time spent managing transactions. This will enable them to direct finance talent away from repetitive tasks and back towards company growth.

The Millennials are here and there is nothing you can do to stop them. Those born between 1982 and 2000 have surpassed the Baby Boomers in sheer numbers and are now the top consumers globally.

DavidNNP/Shutterstock.com

Hospitality is one of the most challenged industries when it comes to ‘Keeping up with the Millennials’, as it is typically a very traditional industry and change isn’t exactly its favourite word. Hotels in particular have been doing the same things, in the same way, for years now. They know change has to happen but more often than not they are quite uncertain as to what that change might be.

Marriott International for instance has gone from producing high-thread-count bedsheets to a YouTube Web series aimed at entertaining younger travellers. They also went on to buy Starwood Hotels & Resorts in a $12.2 billion deal because of its strong presence in the lifestyle brand category. W Hotels (part of Starwood) is all about edgy design, gourmet food and trendy public spaces — all features appealing to the Millennial traveller.

Redesigning for Millennials

A keen focus and demand for the latest technology, public areas with high speed WiFi for both work and play, as well as clever loyalty programs offering instant gratification, are all key to the millennial consumer.

“Millennials aren’t so interested in staying in their room, but congregating in compelling spaces with great design, music and a unique point of view,” says Jason Pomeranc, CEO of SIXTY Hotels. It’s why hotels like ACE and CitizenM are doing so incredibly well. They are first and foremost utilising their non-room space and creating inviting, cutting edge design hubs of interaction.

From major chains to small independent businesses, hospitality companies across the world are redesigning properties, spending a fortune on new technologies and even using Facebook Messenger for their Customer Service communications. It’s what Hyatt Hotels have done recently. In fact, there is a lot you can do from the app if you plan a stay at the Hyatt: check availability, make reservations, enquire about the view and even order room service.

How the Major Players Take Action

The reason for all this commotion – in the USA alone, more than 1 in 3 workers are Millennials, which amounts to some 83.5 million people. “They are becoming the earners, the spenders, the travellers, and importantly, the workers,” remarks Tina Edmundson, Marriott’s global officer for luxury and lifestyle brands.

Here is how a few major players are taking action based on this research:

Hilton will open Canopy next year in Iceland. Each subsequent hotel will be inspired by the local community in everything from design to food and drinks

“By 2025, these guys are going to make up three-quarters of the workforce,” says Guy Langford, vice chairman and U.S. leader of travel, hospitality and leisure at Deloitte. And this is the one aspect the industry still isn’t facing. Most of the back office operations have not changed in the past 10–15 years. For Millennials, each day at work is like going Back to the Past…The heavy use of paper, spreadsheets and antiquated software makes adoption within the Millennial workforce sector very low.

This in turn affects staff retention and therefore drives staff costs ever upwards. Offering Millennial staff the opportunity to continue their digital, one-click habits at work by implementing technology heavily focused on User Experience (UX), is an absolute must for productivity.

“We have to understand what impact they’re going to have in 10 years’ time,” says Langford, “so changes made now, for both the Millennial consumer and the Millennial employee, will see huge ROI.”